


Marlboro Menthols

by regionals



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Drabble, Implied/Referenced Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, character study of sorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 15:22:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20473223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regionals/pseuds/regionals
Summary: Billy hates Karen Wheeler.





	Marlboro Menthols

**Author's Note:**

> [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3vGbUypbsDJOMxEhIMTyyi?si=GYNUEI5jRz6p-5Xb2tT2Gg)
> 
> yea i made a playlist for my own vent fic square up cowards  
also this may be a vent fic but i also used it as an excuse for character study dfhdks idk jus  
something short and absolutely not sweet

Billy hates Karen Wheeler.

She’s like a rabid dog.

Predatory. Unpredictable. Dangerous.

She’s a housewife and homemaker and Billy knows he’s attractive, but he intentionally tries to make himself appealing to boys and girls his own age, not creepy housewives in their late thirties.

*

Billy’s thirteen and her name is Bernice.

He’s friends with her kid — Rob.

He’s more interested in Rob than he is Bernice.

Rob is cute and funny and has a head of insanely curly brown locks. There’s freckles spattered across his cheeks like a galaxy and his doe eyes are the prettiest shade of brown. Billy’s old enough to know that he shouldn’t be looking at Rob like he’s supposed to be looking at girls, but he’s also old enough to know how to keep his mouth shut.

Bernice is thirty four. Her hair is long, brown, and curly like Rob’s. Her eyes are a shade of blue that looks almost gray and even if Billy hadn’t seen her with a Marlboro menthol between her fingers on her porch more than a handful of times, the yellowing in her eyes and fingernails would let him know that she smokes. She’s pretty, in the way that every high school prom queen is later in life, and for the few months he has to get to know her, she doesn’t raise any red flags.

She’s a _ mom. _She’s supposed to be safe. She makes amazing cookies and brownies and Rob loves her to death.

Billy looks up to her in the way he would his own mother, if she were still around.

He’s thirteen and up at midnight for a glass of water during a sleepover. Rob is sound asleep in his own bed, like a _ rock, _and Billy’s halfway through his glass of water when Bernice steps into her kitchen.

She’s dolled up and wearing negligee.

Billy feels the hair on the back of his neck stand on end when she approaches him and throws up when he goes home the next morning.

*

His friends, the ones who aren’t Rob, think it’s _ so cool _that he lost his virginity to someone’s mom.

Billy feels wrong and like he doesn’t belong inside his skin and bones anymore but he knows better than to say anything. Maybe he was trying to reach out for help, or something like that, but he knows now that it’s a foolish idea.

He quits speaking to Rob.

*

Bernice isn’t the first of his friends’ moms to look at him _ like that. _

There’s a few more that come along before Neil plucks his makeshift family out of San Diego and drops them into Hawkins.

He picks up smoking a few months before _ The Move _because outside of loud music and soft touches and caresses from David, the boy that lives next door like some sort of fucking cliche, they’re the only thing that brings him a little peace.

*

Lucas’s mom is a good mom. She doesn’t look at him like he’s a piece of meat waiting to be devoured and even if being around someone else’s mom puts him a little on edge, she just smiles sweetly and tells him to be safe when she gives him directions to the Wheeler residence.

Billy feels his heart drop into his ass when he’s standing face to face with Karen Wheeler. She looks him up and down once, twice. She licks her lips. Bites her bottom lip. Bats her eyelashes. Uses her arms to subtly push her tits together when she invites him inside.

There’s cookies on the counter and they make him think of Bernice.

He was only a little agitated from Neil slapping him but after he gets directions to the Byers residence, he feels like he’s about to crawl out of his body.

He initially planned to tell Max to get the fuck in the car, and to quit talking to fucking Lucas before Neil had an aneurysm over his golden child dating a black child. Lucas knees him in the dick, though, and then fucking _ Steve _is right there and before he knows it, he’s swinging.

The last thing he remembers before Max jabs him with that syringe is the vague thought, the vague knowledge that he’s _ crying. _

*

Karen hits on him every single time he turns up at the Wheeler’s to pick up Max.

Max asks him at some point why he always gets so _ quiet _when he picks her up from there. “If you have an issue with Nancy, you should talk to her instead of giving me the silent treatment,” is how she brings it up. She’s gotten a lot ballsier in the past few months.

Billy doesn’t blame her.

In a rare moment of honesty, he says, “I couldn’t give less of a shit about _ Nancy. _ It’s her creepy fuckin’ _ mom _that I have an issue with.”

_ “Karen?” _Max quirks a skeptical eyebrow at him. “Karen’s, like, the nicest mom ever. You know, besides my own mom.”

“Nice moms don’t hit on sixteen year olds."

She shuts up after that.

*

Billy doesn’t have the words to even begin to explain or apologize to Steve.

He says, “I don’t — I don’t even know where to begin, man,” in a quiet tone of voice on the afternoon he plans to apologize in a rare moment of emotional maturity. 

They’re standing next to the BMW. It’s cold out. Cold enough to disguise the way he trembles slightly.

When Steve says, “You can start with, _ ‘I’m sorry,’” _it doesn’t sound passive aggressive. He sounds like he means it. Like he’d genuinely be satisfied with a simple apology.

So, Billy says, “Okay. I’m sorry.”

Steve pats him on the shoulder, and smiles something a little crooked and goofy. “We should hang out sometime.”

*

It’s summer.

The fresh tattoo on Billy’s shoulder burns, but, in a weird way, it tethers him to his body.

The pool is closed and he’s smoking a menthol in the parking lot before he heads home when Karen approaches him.

He’s been… _ civil _with her, and polite, but he’s had a long fucking shift, and having a thirty seven year old coming onto him in the parking lot of his workplace sets him off. 

He hadn’t planned to confront her _ ever, _really.

She reaches up to touch his hair, and he smacks her hand away. He says, “You need to stop this,” in a tone of voice that he hopes is dangerous and threatening. “This is my workplace. You are twice my age. _ Your daughter _ is older than I am. It’d be fucked up if someone your age hit on Nancy, and I don’t see why it’s any less fucked up for _ you _ to hit on _ me. _ You need to _ fuck off.” _

And — she does. She fucks off.

She looks mortified. She looks like she _ knows _that she’s in the wrong.

Billy doesn’t feel satisfied. He isn’t happy. He isn’t proud of himself. She scrams and he doesn’t quit feeling like he’s about to throw up.

*

Things with Steve change.

They’re friends for a long time.

Steve moves with him when he goes back to California for college. They live in a shitty basement apartment in Chatsworth. The commute to and from the university he goes to is longer than he’d like, but between himself and Steve, they aren’t completely _ broke _after paying their bills every month, so they stay put.

Their apartment is the first place Billy’s ever felt at home in.

They have an impressive collection of succulents lining their windowsills.

Steve doesn’t yell. He doesn’t slam doors. He asks before doing.

When their relationship morphs into something _ more, _ Billy discovers how caring he truly is. It’s overwhelming sometimes. It’s overwhelming to have someone that doesn’t ask a bunch of fucking questions every time he gets panicky in the middle of foreplay. It’s overwhelming to have someone who seems to just sort of _ get it. _

*

Steve apparently _ gets it _more than Billy thinks.

They’re sitting on the cold linoleum in their bathroom sharing menthols after Steve talks him down from a panic attack.

Not his proudest moment.

Steve says, “When I was, like, sixteen or so… I’m at this birthday-slash-house party, right?” His voice sounds a little raw. He cries when Billy cries. He’s _that_ kind of guy. He taps ashes into the dish they usually keep a bar of soap in. “A little drunk. More than a little. And there was this girl. She was, uh, a lot more cognizant of the situation than I was." He doesn't finish explaining.

Billy isn't stupid.

He's quiet for awhile. He knows Steve isn’t expecting anything out of him, but that doesn’t stop him. “When I was thirteen, my best friend’s mom…” He trails off. He doesn’t finish the thought. 

Steve isn’t stupid either.

“That night, when I beat the shit out of you, it wasn’t — it wasn’t because you really did anything. I mean — still super fuckin’ weird for you to be alone in someone’s house with my kid sister, but… Karen Wheeler. Someone told me Maxine might have been at her house. She wasn’t. Karen — Karen tried hitting on me. Didn’t give it up until I told her how creepy it was, either. I was — I was _ pissed _because of that. Not because of you.”

Steve nods a little bit. “She never hit on me like that when I was dating Nancy, but… I don't know. It was weird that my girlfriend’s mom was checking me out.”

Billy snorts. It’s not funny. “Yeah. Pretty fucking weird.”

**Author's Note:**

> no rude comments because im sensitive thanks


End file.
